BT Openworld has taken steps to block traffic upstream from user connections in
an attempt to help reduce the effects of the various worms wandering around the Internet at present, namely NACHI, BLASTER-D & WELCHIA.

The traffic blocked is ping and traceroute (ICMP packets). Additionally the IP ports 69, 445, and 4444 are also temporarily blocked. The main effect of this is to reduce the increasing amount of
traffic noise across ISPs networks and end user connections. Blocking ICMP may cause problems for people who make use of it to monitor visibility of remote sites, but as often is the case when
running a large network, the needs of the many outweigh the needs of a few.

It was only yesterday that BT Openworld sent around a press release saying that interest in their various security products had risen 900% in the last week. The conspiracy theorist will say that
the regular security scares are a way of increasing sales for firewall/anti-virus products.

For some free information on what you should do to protect yourself read the Microsoft bulletin here.